NEW: Recovering from bad hires

25 Nov, 2022 - 10:11 0 Views
NEW: Recovering from bad hires

The Sunday Mail

Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba

“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it”- Simon Sinek

Sometimes it is a waste of time to cry over spilt milk, rather, you should come up with intelligent ideas to avert the disaster.

Last week, we touched on the issue of bad hires that have a negative effect on an organisations’ customer service quality.

Some bad hires can be turned around…You can mould them into stars that will attract more customers.

Here are ways you can turn bad hires into valuable assets:

1. Personal Training
Although training is time consuming and requires lots of commitment, it is worth it.

Management should bear in mind that once-off training will not yield any results, because employees cannot change for the better overnight.

Some companies believe that if they ask a training coach or consultant to train their people for a day, wonders will start happening the following day.

This is not it. Training should be continuous, and for those struggling to perform their duties, it must be on a one-on-one basis.

One thing about personal training is that you also learn about the common mistakes that new employees make, and you can come up with practical ways to avoid them in the future.

Personal training is about hitting the nail on the head.
The general assumption is that after training, every employee is aware of what is expected of them and this helps when it comes to performance appraisal.

2. Develop and Shape the Employees
Employees that directly or indirectly deal with customers should have certain traits.

Organisations should therefore be able to develop these employees, not only through training, but by putting them in roles that they excel at, and with people that they enjoy being around.

Problem identification is very important, because it help you to come up with solutions that are feasible.

Some employees may have problems with their communication skills or even etiquette skills when dealing with certain customers, such that it may cause problems during their interactions.

If a certain lack of skill or skills is apparent, the company can call for training or re-training of their employees on that part of the job.

3. Team Effort
Most employees want to excel and do a great job.

It is rare to find employees that intentionally come to work to do a bad job, and to keep making those mistakes, unless there are other extenuating factors.

Management should therefore take note of the effort being put by these employees, instead of just making them feel bad for making mistakes.

If the employee is trying to do good, management should encourage and support them in every area.

Try to give them a reason to be proud of their work by mentioning and applauding any small milestone they would have achieved.

It could be that some employees are slow when handling tasks, they should be encouraged to pick up pace.

When they do, even the tiniest progress should be genuinely acknowledged. It will make them feel motivated to do better on their next assignment.

They may even come up with better ideas on how certain work issues can be quickly resolved, which will delight the customers.

Thus, both the management and employees must play their roles dutifully and genuinely.

4. Job Rotation
In human resources they use the term ‘job rotation’, but I prefer to call it role-switching.

Whenever there is a vacant placement for a customer serving position, instead of looking for outside placements, the ideal candidate maybe within the organisation.

Try advertising the post internally, and you may be surprised that it will have takers, especially those that are willing to switch from their current positions and take up the new role.

Some people are easily bored by performing the same tasks again and again, and may prefer taking up challenging tasks.

A driver may be a very good merchandiser for the organisation.

Instead, of confining them to a messenger or delivery man, that person may be moved to the sales department and perform way better.

This is because during their previous post, they would have met and interacted with a lot of customers.

Not only did they gain product knowledge, but also an acute knowledge of marketing the same products being delivered.

Although, switching employees from one department to another may mean re-training, which may be costly, it will also be an opportunity to re-assign a struggling employee into a position that they may be able to handle better.

5. Tap a Talent
If you happen to discover the hidden talent of your bad hire, it is always clever to tap into it, and let them do what they are good at.
This means your only issue is training them on aspects to polishing up their work.

Suppose the bad hire has very good people skills but have poor hygiene, your work as an employer is to uphold what they know best and focus on improving their presentation skills and smartness.

In some cases, their dressing is top-notch, but they have a sharp tongue that may be driving customers away.

It is the duty of the organisation to smoothen these rough edges, and make those employees the perfect piece to fit to complete the organisation’s jigsaw puzzle.

*Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba is a marketing enthusiast with a strong passion for customer service. For comments, suggestions and training, she can be reached on [email protected] or on 0712 979 461, 0719 978 335

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